Content
1) Acteurs
2) Accusation
3) process
4) conclusion
5) network for amateur court self-defence
1) Acteurs
a) judge Schöttler
b) chief prosecutor Häussler
c) rest
A) judge xy Schöttler
A real judge. He hates bold audience and usually displaces guests when they laugh, hustle or be playing with robots or doing other neat things. Also he plays with fines: overall he distributed 9 fines between 100 and 200 euro each and one day of arrest or 100 eur as substitute. He does not like to think a lot for himself and therefor follows Häussler’a suggestions.
B) chief prosecutor Bernhard Häussler
One of his most meaningful actions was the permanent blocking of a trial against a member of the Waffen-SS 1 (nazi organization) who was part of the massacre of Sant’Anna di Stazzema:
On August 12th in 1944 fascists members of “Reichsführer-SS” 2 massacred 560 persons in the village Sant’Anna di Stazzema together with a division of Waffen-SS. The massacre was directed at the partisans in this area, because it was more dangerous for the fascists to attack the mountain guerilla directly. Instead civilians had to die.
At the end of WWII these persons have not been persecuted: „After the war the massacre has been concealed, because in western europe a political union against USSR was formed." The files about the incident were stored in a sealed cabinet with the door directed to the wall in Palazzo Cesi, head of military prosecution in Rome, until 1994 (also known as “Cabinet of shame” 3).
In 2005 the culprits were judged for lifelong arrest, though they already stayed in asylum for politically persecuted fascists, western germany. There they had to expect no judgement as they were covered by chief prosecuter Häussler from Stuttgart who delayed the investigations for flimsy reasons.
What is special about responsabilities: First of all we see ongoing criminalization of protestors against Stuttgart 21. Häussler rarely is absent during trials against those even if offences are considered as not severe or complicated enough to assign a duty procurator.
Häussler became famous for persecuting “Nixgut” edition because of their anti-nazi stickers showing a cancelled swastika, symbols of NSDAP. 4
“It is disgusting to sit together with such persons. It makes me sick, it is sad and it is nasty to meet such a person and to see, that he has so much power above others. It is time this ends” , one voice of the audience.
C) the rest
Apart from some court clerks the rest consisted of 15 to 20 people loving and insisting to be alive. Experiences varied from none up to many visitted trials with creative self-defence.
2. The accusation
Urte has been accused to have crossed some police fences at a demonstration against S21, that is why they arrested him_her. They said after that “s_he had flailed around”. Though “without direct hits towards officials” and “none of them had been injured”. Then s_he “called” others to free him_her ith the words “they mistreat me”. No comment about that absurdity. Because neither the resistance nor the liberation are the problem, but what makes resistance necessary to be autonomous are this voilance and domination. Obviously those who oppress to not tolerate resistance. The only problem is if we believe this resistance is wrong.
3. The process
It must not be forgotten that resistance against oppression is legitimate. Therefore Urte has choosen the way of active self-defence. His aim was to not obey the morality of those authoritative peopl. And to show instead: If we do not follo their rules, officials appeal to our reason, which they first define and next force us to follow to.
Looking from a mainstream perspective Urte’s behaviour may seem outrageous. Looking into it more deeply the first words by judge Schöttler appear as a farce when he says “Please” followed by “stand up”: pure zynism if people are fined if they decide not to stand up.
Beeing more sensibile to hierarchies you see the masked power. The judge does not seem to give an order, though everybody followes as if they wanted to do so. But everybody knows, they are fined if they do not. Individuals see others standing up and think, this is common.
Most of the visitors did not want to do so and tried to resist with individual behaviour to show how ridiculous the claims of the judge are. The more this happened, the more obvious the punishment was, which was a success. It shall be visible that justice has power over people because of intimidation of armed officials.
In one of the applications Urte pointed out: "Mister Schöttler does not know me and therefor has no right to judge about myself. I do not belong to what he calls nation / people / folk and will not, never. That is why He is the only member of his “Volk” because what it exactly means is a creation of his personal mind. What he calls “will of the people” is his opinion, based on his own experiences in combination with ideologies, masked as the “will of a nation” (from coffee application).
Therefor Urte used the whole oricess to point out the class perspective to show: if you speak “in the name of the people” you talk about yourself. For the first seven hours this went fine, very political applications have been read and some funny ones, The process was like a cabaret.
Typically the reaction of the “folk representatives” was to arrogantly show how childish ore inreasonable people acted. But honestly, looking at the corners of Häussler’s mouth shaped like horseshoes it is more attractive to be “infantile”. Who had the silly idea to define beeing “infantile, inreasonable, embarassing” as something negative? “I think it was Häussler” said one of his old school fellows.
The longer the process lasted the clearer the front of Häussler and Schöttler against every critical and infantile action became visible. Around 3 o’clock p.m. a break hapened: judge and prosecutor came to the consensus that they will not get along with their laws. So the judge decided to fight Urte by breaking the laws and fining him to have reach a fast end.
He did not allow Urte to make verbal applications, forgot the filings of Urte to defenc himself, claimed to deliver all applications to produce evidence at once, read those 50 pages in 15 minutes and declined all at one time. After three minutes he broke the last word by the accused, which is not allowed. He even prohibited every reading by the audience, no matter if it was press or not. Urte on the other side was alone as his counsel was refused at the beginning of the trial (because of a missing exam). At 6 p.m. the judge managed to judge Urte to 40 days arrest or 15 € each, bit less than the accusation. Urte decided the go to jail so they will not benefit from it.
4. Resume
It is unprobable that the judgement would have been more “mild” with a different process strategy by Urte. Usually suspension is not less probable with active defence. Because judges had to break own laws too often, to intimidate the accused person, it is more probable they are afraid of bad consequences like a successfull revision which is bad for their promotion. Also they are more used to judge in accor and are not willed to deal with complicated trials. "I think they would have judged me in any case because they usually do if police is the accusant. I would have felt bad to accept their accusation. However with active defence fines or consecuting trials are more often. Solidary and support can help to deal with this.
Resonance of nearly all present visitors was positive. At the end of the day their feelings were a mixture of disgust and happyness. We dived into a cold, scornfyl and despicable world, but we left it with a smile. Some of it was real fun. Even Urte, who plans to go to jail, said at the following day: "Despite the sadness because of what I was confronted with I feel good since then. It was great to show together what we think of this justice. I noticed, that what I love and what was punished by justiced found appreciation by others which emancipates myself. I need to laugh when I think of the funny situations. I am afraid of the jail. But this is nothing compared to the daily fear of repression and resultung paralysis.
5. Network for amateur defence
If you are accused and want to stay autonomous during the trial. If you need help or are willing to support other, please contect the network for creative defence in court. It consists of people, who care about active anti-repression.
“The most important aim is to motivate and empower everybody to defend themselves. This does not exclude to help each other, but makes it easier, because who is able to defend him_herself against police or court is more able to help others. The basis is to share knowledge. The aim of this network is to counsil (directly or with documents and websites) and to offer trainings. As often as possible.” (from http://laienverteidigung.de.vu). Attached you find some court application prepared by others for this trial. You are free to use it for your own emancipatory aims.
footnotes
1 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS
2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichsf%C3%BChrer-SS
3 http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sant%27Anna_di_Stazzema
4 http://www.demosanitaeter.de/reload.html?/nixgut.html
so where is the translation?